Pagers are well known in the art. Such pagers generally include receiving circuitry to receive a signal from a remote transmitting station and respond with an audio or visual indication to page the pager holder, hereinafter referred to as the called party. To satisfy the paging function, pagers differ from telephone equipment in that pagers do not include transmission capabilities, but only receiver capabilities. Hereinafter, reference to a pager or pager apparatus means such type of apparatus which can only receive remotely transmitted signals and alert the called party but do not have the capability for transmission of responses. Thus, they cannot support real time, two-way communication.
In addition to the receiving circuitry and display means, pagers have been known to include microprocessors for storing information received by the pager. By way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,696,054, issued to S. Tsugei et al., provides for a wireless device, preferably, pocketable, capable of receiving a message serial number, a display for displaying the message serial number and transmission means for transmitting a response since a receiver cannot inform the operator of the meaning of the message being transmitted. It is evident from the aforementioned description, that the messages received or transmitted can only be very brief. Moreover, no provisions exist to process incoming paging data.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,434 issued to M. Matai et al., and assigned to NEC Corporation, describes an improved receiver whereby the contents of the messages to be displayed are controlled on the basis of control data. It enables a user to grasp the information in long messages without scrolling through their entire contents. It also provides for a display having a "summary display function" which indicates the contents of received messages by either a partial message or a message type display.
While such pagers make use of microprocessors, the use of the microprocessor in a pager has been for very limited functions, and thus far no intelligence functions have been available on pagers. Additionally, the pagers have typically utilized bulky batteries which has resulted in large sized units. Accordingly, while paging devices are readily available, advancement in their technology and expansion of their functions and capabilities has been limited so that pagers are still generally utilized only by select portions of the general population and have been limited to commercial or emergency type usage.